In recent years, an information processing system has been shifting from a conventional host system to a distributed system in which information processing apparatuses operate in cooperation with each other. According to the information processing system in such a distributed system, a certain information processing apparatus distributes a process to another information processing apparatus in response to a request from a user, and the other information processing apparatus executes the distributed process and sends the processed result to the user.
If the information processing system has a performance failure, it may be necessary to change a configuration of the system by adding a new information processing apparatus to the system. However, if the information processing system consists of a plurality of information processing apparatuses, it cannot be easily determined which type of new information processing apparatus should be added to the system. Conventionally, a performance evaluation model has been proposed in order to support such a determination. For example, see J. A. Rolia and K. C. Sevcik, “The method of layers”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 21, 1995. A performance evaluation model may be a queueing model, a discrete event simulator, or the like having granularity of service level such as URL and SQL. In this way, it is possible to analyze behavior inside the information processing system.
A method for determining a configuration to be changed in a real information processing system may be considered by constructing a test system imitating the real information processing system and analyzing the behavior of the test system. However, since a real information processing system may be formed of several hundred of information processing apparatuses, a test system having the same magnitude as that of the information processing system may not be formed. In addition, a technique applicable to the test system refers to Japanese Patent Application Publications 2004-348491 and 1997-311782. Moreover, an engineer who has developed the information processing system may expect a service demand to some extent on the basis of experience in development. However, since an engineer developing the information processing system may be different from an engineer using and managing the information processing system, the engineer who has developed the information processing system cannot be involved in failure correspondence in many cases.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system that overcomes at least one of the aforementioned disadvantages of the prior art.